Lots to see in Little Capri

Awakening this morning, we join our hosts Carlo and Alessandro Scoppa (Rosario hides out in the kitchen!) for breakfast. Apart from supplying you with a great spread of food to start your day, with fresh coffee to boot, they love to hear about how you plan to spend your day, giving suggestions along the way. Breakfasts are simple but with plenty of choice – I go for the ham with tomato and cheese with some fresh bread, along with not one, but two of Carlo’s espresso’s.

We don’t have to go so far for our first sight of the day – the San Chiesa Michele. In fact, it was once a part of the same building we are staying in. When you visit San Chiesa, all the glory is in looking down. There are some gorgeous altars surrounding the church’s octagonal layout, but the highlight of this church is the tiled floor, which tells the story of the temptation of Adam and Eve.

There’s also a spiral staircase leading to an upper floor where you can get a great birds eye view of the stunning floor.

Monte Solaro is the highest point of Capri, reaching 589m above sea level and you can get there by taking the chairlift from Anacapri. Apart from being the highest point on Capri, it is also the most panoramic, with views of the whole island afforded from its terraces.

Unfortunately for us today, the view on one side is not so great….

…but we still manage to sneak some views of the Faraglioni and the Marina Grande side of the island.

There’s a little cafe where you can stop for a drink and lots of seating to take a rest if you are one of those adventurous traveller’s who hiked up the mountain instead of chair-lifting it. It’s good to get up here early-ish in the morning before all the groups of tourists start following you!

At the bottom of the chairlift, we start following a stone-paved, curving path along a shopping street that leads us towards Villa San Michele. The shops sell everything from linen clothing to capri sandals, from limoncello to touristy t-shirts and from ceramics to Murano glass. Hang on, Murano glass???? Yes, Murano Glass – it seems there’s not a place in Italy that you can’t find it, but to me it seems a silly thing to buy here in Capri!

We decide to leave our shopping til after our visit to the Villa – besides, there are enough people crowding the shops at the moment.

Villa San Michele was the dream of Swedish physician Axel Munthe. Axel had visited the island of Capri as a teenager and fallen in love with the ruins of San Michele, along with a plot of land owned by a farmer who was getting on in age and looking to sell his plot.

Although Swedish he actually spent a great deal of his life in France before moving to southern Italy to look after the poor and sick, whilst working towards seeing his life goal come to fruition.

As Capri was littered with Roman ruins, many of the locals gave him pieces of the ruins to help complete his villa – one such find being the Sphinx that overlooks the Gulf of Naples. And of course, there’s a legend here about the Sphinx. Legend has it that if you rest your left hand on the sphinx and make a wish while looking out over the sea of Capri, your wish will come true.

To learn about how Axel’s wish came true, you can read his book “The Story of San Michele”, which of course you can buy in several languages at the villa bookshop – it’s one of the most widely translated books in the world!

We still have loads of time before this day ends, because the sights of Anacapri are relatively close together, so we decide to catch one of the little orange buses down the hill to the centre of Capri. Hmmm, seems everyone else on the island is here too – groups of tourists, groups of school children, just groups and groups of people everywhere! There aren’t any particularly outstanding shops and you find yourself heading for the alleyways just to get away from people for a moment’s peace and quiet!

It’s down one of these alleyways that we find the Charterhouse of San Giacomo. It’s one of the oldest buildings on Capri and was originally a convent.

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Now it houses a collection of somewhat dark and scary paintings by the artist Karl Diffenbach, though throughout the building you will notice fantastic old frescoes in the photos above.

All in all, we are so glad to be staying in Anacapri, away from all the madness. At the end of the day as the tour groups go back to the mainland and the sun goes down, the quietness is almost deafening, but certainly welcome and this is when you can begin to enjoy Capri the most.

For dinner we try what looks like a relatively newly opened wine bar, Casa Rossa Wine & Food (named for it’s location right across from the Casa Rossa Gallery. The menu consists of whatever’s on the chalk board (the moveable board is plonked on or near your table once you are seated) and so does the wine list. I ordered a type of pasta which I had never heard of before but which turned out to be like two giant pieces of ravioli, with mushrooms and cheese inside – just divine. Washed down with a really nice glass of red, and served by a really friendly guy, we really just enjoyed this place.

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Published by EscapefromMe

I never wanted to leave home when I was growing up. Going to some foreign country where the people were different and the food was strange and the culture was a million miles away from mine quite frankly scared the crap out of me. But for some reason when a last minute opportunity came up for me to travel to China, I jumped on board, and though I didn't enjoy it at the time (quite possibly because I had made my first trip out of Australia to a country that was culturally as different as you could get), the extent of what I had seen nd heard and learnt really hit me once I'd had time to reflect. I haven't stopped travelling since. Only now, I have a new challenge - to learn to travel alone...
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Long Weekend in SingaporeFebruary 1, 2018

While madly saving for my next big trip in a year's time, I'm gonna need some downtime in the meantime. Mum & Dad are meeting Chris & Sharon (Dad's cousin from Wales, who I stayed with) in Singapore, so I'm going to join them for a long weekend getaway.